


Unexpected Reunion.

by loisselina (LoisSelina)



Series: Learning to be family again (aka another step robin verse whoops) [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Charming Family (Once Upon a Time), Charming Family Feels (Once Upon a Time), Fluff and Angst, Gen, I'm Bad At Summaries, I'm Bad At Tagging, S3 AU, The Enchanted Forest (Once Upon a Time), look i had writers block and this is what came out okay deal with it pls, no one but me wants this and that is fine, ouat s3 au, probably gonna make this into a series, robin is David's step dad, robin is davids dad, ruth nolan i love you and miss you rip, self indulgent fic, step robin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:15:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29815188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoisSelina/pseuds/loisselina
Summary: S3 AU: Back in the enchanted forest without their daughter and pregnant Snow and David are struggling, yet they have royal obligations, so throw a ball in the refurbished castle, Regina turns up with David's long lost stepfather on her arm, he runs.
Relationships: Evil Queen | Regina Mills/Robin Hood, Prince Charming | David Nolan & Robin Hood, Prince Charming | David Nolan/Snow White | Mary Margaret Blanchard
Series: Learning to be family again (aka another step robin verse whoops) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2191704
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4





	Unexpected Reunion.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [justanoutlaw](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanoutlaw/gifts).



> ive had writers block so bad for a whole month and apparently this is the only cure so whatsupp the like 5 people who will actually read this lmao

David felt like he was being held together as he was forced into his prince costume by the staff, it was their first ball since they had ended up back in the Enchanted Forest, they had been planning it the whole week, or Snow had been planning it, he had been trying his best to pretend to input, but he simply couldn’t focus.

He wasn’t sure if it was the knot in his stomach at the fact that they would be announcing that they were expecting another baby, or if it was the now familiar sensation of missing Emma, it should help that she couldn’t remember them, that Henry and Emma were safe, that in her mind she had kept her son and they had a happy and safe life… but it didn’t, not even slightly, it hurt, he wanted her here, he wanted to see stuffy royals’ faces when they saw Emma glaring at them and probably wearing modern clothes purely to annoy them. 

He wondered how Emma would react to finding out she was to be a big sister, he wondered, not for the first time, how old the baby would be by the time they found a way back to Emma, and then, if they could somehow break her memory curse. 

He realised that his hand had been running through his hair, he knew that if anyone who had dressed him had seen him then he would be on the receiving end of  _ several _ dirty looks, for some reason since coming back here he felt more like that poor shepherd boy shoved into this world than he had since the last time they had been in this castle. 

But he couldn’t bring himself to care about his hair, about his clothes, even about the fear of being a father again, he just felt that pain of missing his daughter, of both him and Snow having to pretend to be happy that Emma was safe and living her own life, because they weren’t, not really, they wanted her back. 

“Honey?”

David gave a small jump, he hadn’t noticed that Snow had walked into the room, his hand went to his chest as though to touch his racing heart, he tried to cover it up by keeping his hand pressed to his heart and bowing, when he righted himself his mask was in place once again, not wanting to make his wife sad. “You look beautiful, my love.”

Snow gave him a tiny closed mouth smile but he could see her eyes searching him, trying to find what was wrong, even if they both knew the obvious answer, “Thank you, Charming. You look very handsome.”

He sent her a grateful smile and closed the gap between them, carefully dropping a kiss onto Snow’s cheek, careful not to mess any of the makeup carefully painted onto his wife’s face. 

“Emma would have hated this, going to a ball.”

David watched the smile on Snow’s face which didn’t quite meet her eyes, he set an equally bittersweet smile back to her, “She would have had fun trying to destroy it, or trying to shock the royals we don’t like, the ones who don’t know her,” he could feel the drop of mischief in is smile, knowing that he would have fully encouraged her, Snow gave him a smile which told him that she knew what he was thinking. 

They stayed like that for a second, until the chiming of a clock sounded in David’s bedroom, the one he only dressed in, ignoring the ‘proper’ rules of royals keeping separate bedrooms. A half a second later even more clocks sounded down the hallway and around the castle. 

“Time to go,” Snow announced, trying to sound like she was excited or looking forward to it, but he knew it was for him, to try and encourage him, and because of that he sewed on a smile and held out his arm to her. 

  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  


“In coming,” Ruby smirked at David laughing as he let out a loud groan and threw his head back.

“Oh c’mon, there can’t be  _ more _ Royals we have to officially greet,” he said with another groan as his wife made it to the two of them, lurking at the edge of the ballroom, “seriously, they can’t greet themselves? They knew where they were coming, we knew that they’re coming, why do we have to pretend to be shocked that they’re in attendance?” He had kept his innocent face on his face in place but even that had earned him a glare from his wife. He wished, for the thousandth time, that Emma was there, she could have told whoever it was to go and fuck themself and Snow would have barely spared her a disappointed look. 

“One last one, and it’s not just any royals, it’s Regina, and her new boyfriend.”

David stared blankly at her.

“Oh come on, you remember I told you she has a new boyfriend?”

“I remember you telling me, but Regina kept insisting they’re not dating…” he raised a brow at Snow whose smile turned excited, she rested her hands on her barely there bump. 

“She finally admitted it to me earlier, she was very nervous about bringing him here, she enchanted one of the mirrors to use like skype, she wanted dress advice, and she told me a lot about him, he’s definitely not a royal, he’s very down to earth, funny,  _ kind _ , and handsome, according to Regina, we both think that you’ll both get along.”

David narrowed his eyes but amusement tugged his mouth into a half smile. 

Ruby let out a snort of laughter, “Are you and Regina setting David up on a blind date to find him a friend?”

Snow opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, before she smiled sweetly, “It wouldn’t be the worst thing to have another friend, especially as Regina is family,” she looped her arm through her husbands, “now come on, please, and try and stop me from saying anything to embarrass Regina or she’ll turn me into a frog.”

“I’m not stopping that, but I  _ will _ kiss you to change you back,” he promised her chuckling, he turned his head back towards his only friend in that room other than his wife, and mouthed ‘Save me’, back at Ruby, who seemed to be enjoying this and definitely would not be helping him. 

He only turned away from glaring at his friend when he heard his and Regina’s voices already beginning to chatter. 

“And this is David, he can be an idiot, you’ll get along,”

David turned seeing Regina first, glaring at her playfully, knowing she both didn’t mean it and that she was kind of right, and that she meant no malice, 

“David, this is Robin, again, an idiot.”

In a fluid motion he held his hand out and turned his head towards Regina’s companion, it took him only a second to freeze, the next second a wire in his brain connected, a spark flew off, his mouth dropped, at the same time his hand dropped, no longer offering it out in friendship, in solidarity, in welcome. 

“..... S…  _ Sunshine _ ?”

The English voice was strangled, as though forcing his voice out from a dry throat, full of disbelief. 

David wanted to run, to cry, to throw a punch, to have the last several decades back, to have told this man to fuck off when he had first been introduced to him: Robin Hood. Robin Locksley. Regina’s date. His mother’s second husband. His father for nearly six years.

“Sunshi-”

David cut off the man’s excited if disbelieving exclamation with a voice so full of venom David was shocked at himself, “ _ You _ don’t get to call me that.”

“Davey-”

“ _ No. _ ” David could feel his hand shaking, clasped at his side was his hand, clenched into a fist, “ _ No, Robin” _ his voice was being forced out between clenched teeth his sight was being blurred from the tears forming in his eyes, “ _ No. You _ don’t get to call that, or Sunshine, or fuckin’ anything, you don’t get to- you don’t get to, to… just fuck off, now. Get out of here. Disappear, we both know you’re good at that.”

“Charming, what’s going on?” Snow’s hand went to his arm, squeezing it in reassurance that she was there, but her stance was tense, David knew that one wel, she was readying to fight even if she didn’t know what was happening.

“Kid,” Robin held his hands up in surrender, “sorry, sorry,  _ David _ , but please,please can we talk, let me explain to you, like me… please?”

“I don’t owe you  _ anything _ , I don’t have to listen to you.”

“David you don’t have to, but let’s take this conversation somewhere a little more private.” The older man begged.

David could see Regina looking at him differently, oh, so she knew then, he felt a bitter taste in the back of his throat… But he could also feel the eyes of all of the people at the ball on him, even if they were trying to hide it.    
“You should leave him now, Regina, he’ll just break your heart and leave you high and dry, without a care in the world.”

“David it wasn’t like that, he told me everything, things you don’t know.”

“David I would  _ never! _ Please, kiddo, please let me explain. You can hate me all you want, but  _ please, just let me talk to you _ .”

He was about to give a reluctant nod, if only to be out of this room surrounded by people watching his life fall apart, when a voice came calling out through the quietened room. 

“Papa!”

David was searching his mind for whose son it was running towards them, preparing to make his swift exit from this surprise reunion by helping the kid find his parents. But the child ran past them, barrelling into Robin’s legs. 

David’s heart dropped, Robin swooped the child, his  _ son _ , up into his arms, something inside of David fractured, a crack which he had forgotten had ever even formed.

  
  


He heard himself murmur that he needed some air as he turned on his heels and fled the ballroom. 

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  


David didn’t know how long he had been gone from the ballroom. He had grabbed a horse and just rode, he rode until he was so cold and wet from the rain that he was numb, but his mind was still racing. 

He only stopped when he felt his horse tiring, luckily there was a lake on the edge of the kingdom, he unmounted, led the horse to water before settling down beside it, looking into the cold depths. 

He stared even as his mind imagined shapes in the water, even after his horse finished drinking and sat down. A blanket appeared around his shoulders, he sighed, not ready to face Snow or Regina, or even Ruby, especially after forcing them to come searching for him.

“You should have dressed warmer, you know how your lungs are, you could get sick.” 

David forced himself not to shrug off the blanket, if only because Robin was right, it was the entire reason why James had been given away, for lung medication, asthma, though they hadn’t had the word for it. “You don’t get to worry about me.”

He heard the sound of movement beside him, Robin slowly lowered himself to the ground and sat beside him, with just enough space that David wouldn’t bolt, but close enough that the man was a constant heat source beside him.    
“There hasn’t been a day since I met you that I haven’t worried about you, and there’s never going to be one, even when I’m just bones feeding the worms.

“I don’t care,” David’s early anger was now just numb pain, “I stopped caring a long long time ago,” he knew it was a lie, he was certain that Robin knew so too, 

“You don’t have to care, but that won’t stop me from caring, you can not care, you can hate me, you can ignore me, but it won’t stop you from being my kid, ever… It won’t stop me from trying, either.”

“You’re  _ not _ my dad.” David still refused to look at the man, his eyes were on the lake, his eyes blurring it with tears.

“I am more your father than Robert  _ ever _ was,” there was iron in Robin’s voice, a certainty, the same certainty which had once been in his voice when he was teaching David everything he knew. 

“Guess you learnt from him though, that whole disappearing magic trick, you really perfected it though we didn’t even find your body like we found his, really congrats, that’s impressive.”

“Davey,” Robin’s voice came out in a tired sigh.

David finally looked from the lake to his stepfather, whose head was fully back to stare at the starry night, David remembered then how much Robin had loved the stars, when David was a kid. Suddenly Robin turned his head so their eyes met, David was shocked to see the love in his eyes, the same which had been in his eyes so many years ago, it made him want to cry, to run, to fight, all over again, but he forced himself to keep looking at him. 

“Do you really think that I would ever have voluntarily left you? Left Ruth? That I’d ever,  _ ever _ , be like Robert?”

Yes, actually, David had thought exactly that.   
He had loved Robert, but he hadn’t liked him, the man who would only drink and hit him and his mother, but Robin…    
Robin had never been like that, he had never hurt him, had never hurt Ruth, the exact opposite in fact; he would teach David to read and write, to do outdoorsy things, the things which had aided him when he had eventually ran from George, he had loved Ruth, when he was living there there had been more animals on their homestead, more plants, more food in their kitchen and in their stomachs, more light in their lives.    
When he had disappeared their lives had…. There was less light, less everything, both had assumed, when he hadn’t come back after a year, that he had done just what Robert had done, it was easier to believe than living with the empty hope of him coming back. 

“I assumed you were dead…. Guess not… you moved on.” He thought about the little boy running towards his father. 

“No! No I never moved on I… I got caught in a portal, I don’t know who was using it, or why, or even how, but I got caught in it and ended up in some world where time didn’t pass as it does here. Do you believe me?”

David didn’t want to, he really didn’t want to, he wanted things to be as simple as with his biological father, he wanted to simply not be wanted, not to have lost yet another person who loved him… But he had also been in just as weird, if not weirder, situations. “You have a kid.”

“I… Roland? …His mother died when he was only young, she was the first person I loved since I had been married to your mother.”

David rolled his eyes not believing. 

“Hey,” the man softly admonished, “it’s true. I came back after she had died, I came here, I searched for you, for your mother, I went to the cottage, I scoured the woods, I  _ searched _ for you for so long, Sunshine.” 

This time David didn’t tell him to stop calling him by the old familiar nickname, telling him to stop clearly wasn’t working, he just stared back at the water. 

“I didn’t have  _ a _ kid,” he ignored the snort from David, clearly thinking that Robin thought that he was stupid, “I had  _ another  _ kid. You are my kid-”

“-I’m no-”

“You can keep saying that until you’re blue in the face, sunshine, you’re never going to be right, and I’m never going to stop arguing.”

David let out a huff so loud his daughter would have been proud, “Whatever,” he was suddenly struck by the realisation that he was acting like his daughter, how betrayed and angry, how sad she had been, after he and Snow had shown her that bean field, the argument they had gotten into, the dreams he had had of her since finding out that Snow was pregnant, wondering how she would react to being a big sister. 

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t get back to you, I tried, I  _ wanted _ to be there for you, to watch you grow up, to see the man you turned into, to be there for you and for Ruth, to have met your wife years ago, to have been able to stand beside you at your wedding day, to have gotten to know your daughter… I wanted to get back to you, my oldest son, I tried... I really really tried, you have no idea…”

There was a silence where the two men could only hear the nighttime creatures and the sound of two horses nearby. Robin shifted and the next thing David knew the weight of Robin’s cloak draped around his shoulders. 

David turned his head to look at him, tilting it to the side, only realising he did so when Robin let out a surprised laugh, David scrunched up his face, then groaned throwing his head back to look at the stars. “I do  _ not _ have a confused puppy look.”

“You look just like Wilby.”

David sent him a glare which was mostly playful, “And I was oh so close to forgiving you.”

Robin’s laugh stopped, his turn to look confused, he could see some tears in his eyes, “You were?”

“I… I don’t know,” David admitted, he hadn’t even meant to say it at all, “I know I should… I just… It’s hard, you’re still the same, but…. So much has changed. I’ve been angry at you for such a long time…”    
He remembered sitting side by side with Emma the first night she and Snow had come back from the Enchanted Forest, he was so scared to make a wrong move… Emma had insisted that watching Brooklynn 99 was part of the official sheriff training, but really she had wanted to spend time with him, yet she needed an excuse. He remembered watching her laugh, slowly getting to know his daughter who had grown up before his eyes.   
“...But my daughter, I have a daughter,”

“Emma,” Robin supplied, having heard everything from Regina.

“Y-yeah… We,  _ I  _ had to send her through a portal, I nearly died doing so, but it was in the hope that we’d see her again… when we did she was an adult, she had spent most of her life angry at us… it was hard, she put up some walls,” he ran his hand through his hair, “but we worked on it, by the time we were sent back here, without her… I…” he sucked down a shuddering breath, “we had worked on it, she wasn’t angry at us, we were a family… we still are.”

“You always will be,” Robin hesitated for only a second before wrapping his arm around David and pulling him into a side hug, wrapping his other arm around his chest as soon as he realised that David,  _ his kid _ wasn’t about to move away, he felt David’s head rest against his chest, he dropped his own head to press a silent kiss onto David’s blonde waves of hair.

  
  


* * *

They stayed like that for a while, probably too long, especially with the rain still falling around them, and David shivering.   
“You’re going to find her again, find a way back to her, I promise, I’ll help in any way I can, we’ll all go back to that town of yours Regina has told me all about, and we’ll find her, your daughter and your grandson, not that I can believe that you’re a grandfather now.” There was a teasing tone tagged to the end of his sentence. 

“What’s that make you?” David murmured but he didn’t pull his head away from his father’s chest, there was something comforting about the fact that he still smelt like the forest, like home. 

“Davey you started calling me old by the time you were about eight, you calling me old now isn’t all that surprising,” he heard David let out a laugh, he could hear how tired he was, he hadn’t been his parent since David was nearly thirteen, but there were some things about your kid which you just never forgot, he supposed. “Are you too tired to ride?”

David let out a sigh as he pulled back from Robin, wishing he could stay there, it was harder to be mad at Robin when he was cuddled up to him. “Shit… I shouldn’t have left Snow like that.”

“She knows I was coming to get you, that you’d be alright, that you’d be back… she also threatened me, so did Regina.”

“Regina? I’m pretty sure she doesn’t like me.” 

“Believe me when I say that she does, you and Snow, Emma and Henry, you’re her family… even if she says that you and your daughter can be idiots, I can certainly vouch that you can be one,” he smirked, giving him a look to actually answer his original question. 

“I’m never an idiot! I only carry out fully thought out plans!”

Robin couldn’t help but laugh, memories of patching David up so many times after he had done something idiotic. “You know it’s not so hard for me to see you still as my child when you’re stalling like you used to at bed time when you were around Roland’s age.” He forced himself to his feet holding out his hand to help his son up to his feet, he knew they had a long way to go, but this was a start.

David rolled his eyes, “I’ve gotta ride,” trying not to sigh or whine, he accepted the hand and got to his feet, “there’s two horses, we don’t have cars here.”

“Cars?”

“Like a metal carriage without horses or magic… and a masterpiece of a movie.”

Robin opened his mouth in confusion then shook his head, he would ask Regina for a translation later, “Your horse can follow behind us, they’re good at doing that, you’re riding with me.”

He sucked in a breath, “I don’t  _ need _ to-”

“Davey, I’m not letting you fall off a horse because you’re tired, I just got you back, I’m not risking losing you, not again. Got it?”

David remembered all of the times Snow had giggled and pointed out to him that he had been using his ‘Dad voice’ on Emma, even though she was an adult, he hadn’t even known he had a voice like that, it was now that he realised that Robin was using the same voice on him… He was too tired to protest, he could save that for another day, when he wasn’t feeling so raw. “You haven’t won this, I’m just too tired to bother fighting,” he told him instead. 

“Uh huh, sure kid, you won, I won’t tell anyone anything otherwise,” He told him with a fond roll of his eyes as David yawned, Robin couldn’t help but reach out and ruffle his hair, “get on the horse, Sunshine, I’ll sort out the horses.” To his relief and disbelief David did as he was told, Robin smiled softly after him, once they got back to David’s castle he could have his own freakout about finding him again, but for now he would get his son home safe, he would be his dad, he would prove that he could be dependable. 

He sorted out the horses and climbed on the horse behind David, taking the reins, as he had when David was only seven, he knew that David only leant back to him because he was tired, but it still made him want to cry with joy. 


End file.
